"Every animal he found he took home," said Cheryl Ferguson, who worked with him for several months last year.

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"He had camels and emus and horses, and about five dogs."

Dr Towie, 53, an outspoken GP and fierce advocate for the underdog, is believed to have died in the bushfires that assailed his home near Broadford.

"He was very courageous, and stood up for what he believed," Mrs Towie said. "He sometimes rubbed people up the wrong way. He was fearless in some ways."

Dr Towie, a man who would stare down bureaucracy to lobby for the rights of refugees and migrants, at one time made the list of 50 most intriguing GPs in a medical magazine, his mother said.

A high-profile example was the plight of Syrian-born grandmother Aziza Agha, 79, who died after immigration officials ignored medical advice about her condition and insisted that she travel from Broadmeadows to Melbourne for a visa-related check-up, despite warnings from Dr Towie that to do so would put her life at risk.

The examining doctor appointed by the Immigration Medical Board certified Mrs Agha, who was visiting from Lebanon, as fit to travel. Two days later, she died of a heart attack.

On her death certificate, Dr Towie cited "being harassed by the Department of Immigration" as the cause of death.

Dr Towie chose to work in areas of disadvantage.

In interviews with The Age in recent years he spoke passionately about the challenges faced by doctors treating drug-addicted patients.

Ms Ferguson  who was his personal assistant and manager at the Broadmeadows medical clinic where he used to work before leaving the practice to set up another one  remembers the time he brought a baby wallaby into the Broadmeadows clinic.

"The mother had been hit by a car and died, and he picked up this little thing and put it in his pocket and got it some special milk," she says.

The Broadmeadows clinic has been inundated with phone calls asking about him. He hasn't worked there for many months but still the calls come from patients whose lives he touched.